


if a tree falls

by qwerty



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Community: merlin_melee, Future Fic, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 21:45:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwerty/pseuds/qwerty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time passes. Hours, days, lifetimes. And one day, a man walks into a forest with no conscious object, and finds a tree, and he remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if a tree falls

_If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?_

There is a tree in the forest that legends claim is haunted, or possessed. A spirit inhabits it, that whispers too low to be heard, that exhales dreams of mythical, imaginary landscapes, that waits for something long-forgotten. The legends lie.

The old tree is warm and solid beneath his hands, hard and unyielding beneath the deceptive softness of lichen and moss on its surface. The man flips open his pocket knife and scrapes off the concealing layers to the rough bark resting inside. Presses the chipped blade into a crack and prises at the scarred wood as if he can cleave it with just this, until the tree bleeds sap, as it always does.

Only sap, no matter how deep he cuts and despite the chips of living wood he pulls from the wound like flesh, working until his fingers are raw and red with his own blood, shaping the widening groove he has cut into the trunk.

No one sees, no one stops him. He can cut it down and forget it forever, and no one will know. The tree bleeds silence.

 _If half of a whole must be sacrificed to maintain balance, what is there left?._

"Another exchange? I thought he was done dealing with you." The man looks down at the rust-stained rip gaping in his mail and gambeson, his fingers hesitantly probing at the unmarked skin beneath. Suddenly angry, he advances on the woman in red watching him. "I never asked for this. Take back your enchantments, witch. Restore him."

The woman in red makes no move to stop him, yet he stops. She smiles. "But this enchantment is not of my doing. He bargained for knowledge, and these are the terms he chose himself."

"You lie," the man accuses, but knows it for truth. "What do I do?"

"You wait, and when the time comes, you may free him. If that is your wish."

"How long must I wait?" he demands, and the forest has no answers.

 _If you lose half of yourself, what is there left of you?_

Time passes. Hours, days, lifetimes. And one day, a man walks into a forest with no conscious object, and finds a tree, and he remembers.

 _If a journey comes to an end, and the end is where it begins..._

The man has carved out a hollow in the slumbering wood, and on one edge of the opening the roughly-shaped wood looks like fingers, a hand, reaching out from inside the tree in a tentative offer of friendship.

He touches the fingers. They flex, turn; warm and real, living flesh slides over and grasps his torn hand, and he seizes the hand in both of his own and pulls.

Wood swells, splits, and falls away as an arm appears, then a dark head, shoulders, torso, sticky with sap and streaked blood, and as the emerging man breaks free from the tree he takes a surprised gasp of air as though he were being birthed a second time.

The first man drags him completely free of the shattered tree, and, clutching each other desperately, they fall to the soft loam together.

"You are a fool," the first man says, and the other replies, "and yet you came."


End file.
